Views from the Promenade

Struggling as a team, and need a pick me up? There’s nothing better than seeing the Washington Nationals coming up on your schedule. Even the Mets look good when they’re taking on the hapless Nats. Livan Hernandez came back with a strong start, and despite some shakiness in the eighth inning, the bullpen came through as well.

In other news, there’s a lot of talk going around that the Mets rejected an offer for Blue Jays ace Roy Halladay. The reported offer had the Mets shipping four prospects to Toronto in exchange for Halladay: Fernando Martinez, Jon Niese, Ruben Tejada and Bobby Parnell.

My first reaction was shock: how could the Mets pass up a no-brainer like this one? The more I think about it though, the less certain I am that it’s such a good deal. It’s nowhere near the steal the Mets got when they traded for Johan Santana. Still, it seems like this is the kind of deal Mets fans are begging for, the same kind that the front office so rarely pulls off. Would the Mets be better in the long term if they made this deal? I’m not sure, but I know the fanbase would be energized by seeing Santana and Halladay in the same rotation, throwing gems night after night.

I’m interested in seeing if anything more comes out about this story tomorrow; if it does, maybe it’ll shine some light on why exactly the Mets chose not to make the deal. It’s possible that the deal being reported isn’t exactly what was on the table when Omar Minaya rejected it.

Mets fans will be understandably pessimistic heading into the second half of the season. The team is struggling, we’re still suffering through one of the worst rash of injuries the Mets have ever seen, and management doesn’t appear to be looking to make a big trade to improve the team and make a run.

All that said, let’s not give up hope yet. There’s plenty of talent on this team, even if some of that talent is on the disabled list. If the Mets hang roughly where they are — within 6-7 games or so of first — until they start getting players like Jose Reyes and Carlos Beltran back, all is not yet lost. The Mets would need some help, because if the Phillies play as well as they can, it would be nearly impossible to catch them. But until the last two weeks, Philadelphia hadn’t shown the ability to start distancing themselves from the rest of the NL East; if their recent run proves to be the exception rather than the rule, there’s still a chance for the Mets to play themselves back into contention.

We’ll see how the Mets open up the second half tomorrow night in Atlanta, and hope they can start to turn things around — otherwise, it could be a long and boring summer. For now though, I want to give my take on the five biggest storylines of the first half:

1. Citi Field: The new home of the Mets quickly developed a reputation as being one of the most pitcher-friendly parks in the league, and commentators have noted all season long that home run numbers at the park are down significantly. Part of this is true, but some of the perception doesn’t quite match the numbers. According to ESPN’s Park Factors, Citi Field is near the bottom of the league in terms of how many runs it allows, ranking 26th out of 30. But this is mostly due to a big reduction in walks and doubles; homers are almost exactly where you’d expect them to be (technically, they’re up 0.7%) when you compare how the same players perform in Citi Field compared to everywhere else. I have a feeling this number will come down, and Citi Field will prove to have some effect on the long ball, but only a moderate one — not the extreme one we’ve been told about.
2. The Mets Power Outage: For a while, the new park made an excellent excuse for why the Mets weren’t hitting home runs. Before too long, it became apparent that the team was hitting even fewer away from home, making it obvious that something was up with the players themselves. At the midpoint of the season, the Mets are last in the league with just 52 home runs as a team, and they’re not likely to get out of the cellar; even 29th placed Pittsburgh has 62.
3. David Wright’s Strange Season: One player who has a large hand in the lack of power is David Wright, who is having the strangest season of his career. His home runs are down (5), his strikeouts are up (87), and he has gone through terrible slumps and incredible hot streaks. And yet, despite all this, you can’t say he’s having a bad year when his on-base percentage is at .410 — he’s just not having the same sort of good year he’s had in the past. Actually, his most recent slump has taken his numbers down enough that this season looks a little off from his career norms, but before then he had largely been making up for the lack of power. Hopefully he’ll get some of his pop back in the second half, because the Mets need some in the middle of the lineup.
4. The Injuries: Oh, the injuries. It’s often said that you can’t blame injuries for a team’s struggles, but rarely does a team get hit nearly as hard as the Mets have this year. Is there any doubt that the presence of Carlos Delgado, Carlos Beltran, and Jose Reyes wouldn’t have been worth at least a few games? And as much as they have struggled this season, wouldn’t a healthy John Maine and Oliver Perez have bolstered the starting rotation just a bit? The fact that the Mets haven’t fallen completely out of the race despite these injuries is one reason to feel just a little hope for the second half.
5. Church for Francouer: It probably won’t be the greatest trade the Mets ever made, but the more I think about it, the more it seems that the Mets can’t really lose. After all, they had no intention to actually use Church, so even if Francouer is a bust (and even after his hot start with the Mets, he probably will be), there’s no real loss involved. On the other hand, if Francouer really did just need a change of scenery, the deal could turn into a steal for the Mets.

Let’s throw this out there first: Ryan Church is an average outfielder whose production has declined in the last two years, possibly in some part due to the concussion madness he went through last season. For whatever reason, it was clear he just wasn’t well liked by Jerry Manuel, and so even the limited value he did have wasn’t being taken advantage of. Because of this, the people who are considering this trade a disaster are wrong, because no trade where all we lose is Church can be a big loss. I liked the guy, but he wasn’t a critical part of the team by any stretch.

When a friend and I first discussed the trade for Jeff Francoeur, I thought it sounded interesting. I wasn’t sure he’d actually be an improvement, and I hadn’t looked at what he’d been doing in a while. I just remembered vauge impressions: he strikes out a lot, doesn’t walk, has a cannon for an arm, and hits for some power. That sort of player didn’t sound too bad, and he’s still young (just 25), so maybe he could grow into a more complete player.

Then I thought about it some more, and started to like it less.

Then I took a look at Francoeur’s numbers over the last couple of years, and wondered if we could send him back to the Braves.

A lot of what I’ve heard in defense of this trade — from those brave  enough to defend it — is that Francoeur is young, and has a lot of everyone’s favorite word: upside! That’s one of those sports words that should immediately cause you to want more information, because it doesn’t mean much, and avoids talking about what the player can actually do.

So, let’s look at what Francoeur does. As mentioned, he strikes out a lot, and doesn’t walk; he’s gone down on strikes over 100 times each of the last three seasons, and hasn’t walked more than 42 times in any year. He did hit 29 homers in 2006, but then fell to 19 in 2007, and 11 last year.

The most damning statistic for Francoeur shouldn’t come as a surprise when paired with those K and BB totals above. One person I talked to about this trade compared Francoeur to David Wright, saying they’re a similar type of player, and had concerns that Francoeur and Wright together in the lineup would generate way too many strikeouts. While the part about the strikeouts is true, it’s important to point out that Wright is an infinitely more valuable player than Francoeur — it’s not even close to being close. Why? Well, historically, Wright hits for more power and a higher average and is much better on the basepaths, but my real point is that they differ significantly in the one number that sums up why Francoeur just isn’t very good at all.

Lifetime on-base percentage:

Wright: .392 (.416 this year)

Francoeur: .308 (.282 this year)

Yikes! .308 is a bad OBP, no doubt about it. But this season’s .282 isn’t just bad, it’s horrific. It’s the kind of thing that kills an offense, because it means Francoeur is making 72 outs every 100 times he gets up to the plate. Even worse, he’s not hitting for any power this year, with just 19 extra-base hits all season. He’s simply an awful offensive player right now.

But what about the upside? Francoeur is still young, and can improve, right? It’s true that Francoeur is 25, but 25 isn’t that young in baseball terms. Even worse, his numbers have declined over the last two seasons, showing that he might be regressing rather than improving.

Surely, for a player to be tauted as having so much upside, he must have shown something at some point, right? We might expect to at least take some hope from what he did in the minors — maybe that’ll give us some insight into the player everyone hopes he’ll become. Unfortunately, he wasn’t even a very good career minor leaguer: a .285/.332/.480 line (that’s batting average/on-base/slugging) isn’t awful, but it’s not impressive against low level competition — and the numbers got worse as he moved up from Rookie ball to A and AA leagues.

All the “upside” people see in Francoeur is thier hopes for what they want him to be. There’s nothing, other than some limited success in his first couple years up in the majors, that suggests he’ll ever develop into a good major league hitter, and right now he seems to be a very bad one. I’m hoping he’ll prove me wrong and develop a better eye and/or more power over the next couple seasons…but I think any positive expectations anyone has right now are little more than wishful thinking. The Mets didn’t give up much in this trade, but they probably got even less back.

Is it possible the Mets are heading back in the right direction? It’s not like either of the last two wins were pretty, but they were wins. Now is not the time for us to complain about how they’re doing it — every win is a plus. One day after a magnificent pitching performance by Mike Pelfrey, the Mets made it two in a row in today’s 9-8 come from behind victory over the Pirates.

This was definitely the right time for the Mets to play Pittsburgh. If I could magically alter the schedule for the Mets, they’d be playing the Nationals every day until Jose Reyes and Carlos Beltran return. Until the Mets are reasonably healthy, they need to take advantage of every opportunity they get against the league’s doormats.

I’ve seen the reaction to today’s game fall into two camps:

1. “Wow, what a gutty performance by the Mets! They never gave up and showed real heart! It wasn’t pretty, but all that matters is that they won.”
2. “It’s nice that the Mets won, but wow, this does not look like a good team. I refuse to get excited.”

To be honest, neither of these reactions are outrageous. It’s true that there was a lot of be unhappy about in today’s game: Tim Redding looked awful, and K-Rod had a poor outing (not to mention, his two innings of work will likely make him unavailable for a couple days). On the other hand, a win is a win, and we should be happy with whatever the current Mets roster can give us. The fact that they’re hanging so close to the Phillies should give us a lot of hope, even if it’s not always fun to watch right now. Wasn’t the NL East supposed to be a strong division going into the season?

By the way, I’ve heard an argument made several times that the Mets shouldn’t make a trade at this point because one player can’t fix all their problems. While it’s true that no player they bring in will turn the current roster into a great team, that’s not the point of making a deal right now. The goal is to make the playoffs, and the Mets may not have to be a great team to do that. After nearly half a season, they stand just one game out of first place in the division, and nobody looks poised to pull away from the pack. If you don’t think that a big bat will fundamentally change the team, that’s fine (and true), but I have no doubt that a good player will make the Mets more than one game better over the second half of the season — and that might be the difference between October baseball or more disappointment.

I went out to dinner with my family tonight to celebrate a relative’s birthday. When we left for the restaurant, the third inning had just ended. When we returned home, it was the top of the 8th. In the time we were out, the Mets had failed to get a single runner on base, a streak that only ended with Carlos Beltran’s two-out single in the 9th.

It has become painfully obvious in recent weeks that the Mets desperately need to add a batter to bolster the middle of the lineup. Beltran and David Wright have been the only hitters that worry opposing pitchers in the lineup, and when their bats go cold (as Wright’s has once again in the past four games), the offensive grinds to a halt. Yes, Gary Sheffield and others have contributed, but I firmly believe there needs to be one more guy in the middle of that lineup who can put up big numbers.

The places we can add to are fairly obvious. The outfield situation is always in flux, so adding another bat here wouldn’t disrupt the team too much. Even better would be to add a first baseman; while Daniel Murphy’s defense at the position has been a pleasant surprise, he doesn’t hit like a major league caliber 1B, and we have no idea what to expect from Carlos Delgado when or if he returns.

Of all the names floated as who the Mets could acquire, my personal preference is Adam Dunn. Yes, he’d be a defensive liability wherever he’s put (I think first base makes the most sense), and that’s a legitimate complaint about him. Less convincing is the concern over his strikeout totals — Dunn might rack those up, but he also hits for power (18 HR, .541 slugging) and gets on base at a tremendous clip (.406 OBP), which are the two most valuable things a hitter can do. The strikeouts will frustrate you, but his production won’t. The biggest problem may be that, as Matthew Cerrone pointed out over at MetsBlog, the Nationals may not even want to trade Dunn.

There are other options, such as Nick Johnson or Aubrey Huff, who would both likely provide a boost over Murphy’s offense at first. Of the two, I’d prefer Johnson, although Huff may have turned some heads in the Mets’ recent series against the Orioles. In any case, the time to make a move is now — the Mets can’t afford to watch their offense flounder for another month before the trade deadline nears.